


Breakable

by shaenie



Category: The Faculty
Genre: Angst, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2003-05-19
Updated: 2003-05-19
Packaged: 2017-10-12 05:18:01
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,707
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/121207
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shaenie/pseuds/shaenie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>aftermath</p>
            </blockquote>





	Breakable

**Author's Note:**

> There is no happy to be found here, guys. Angst and a serious lack of any kind of resolution. Written for the challenge theme Jealousy, with the words blood and liquor.

It becomes clear to Casey sooner, rather than later. Sooner being almost immediately, in fact.

It is surreal. Not that the whole fucking thing hasn't been surreal. But this part, especially, seems to exceed that. It edges past surreal, drifts into the realm of 'unreal'.

Casey had always thought he had left childhood behind his freshman year of high school. He thought a kid named Roy had murdered it with his lunch tray one day as Casey was absently winding his way through the lunch line. It was his second or third week of school, and foolishly, Casey had been rather enjoying the high school experience. Roy had slid into line ahead of Casey, blatantly line hopping, and Casey, who had not yet learned that his lower lip practically begged to be split open, had said: "The end of the line is that way, dude," hooking his thumb over his right shoulder.

And Roy had turned casually toward him and slammed him full in the face with his lunch tray.

Casey remembers the name and circumstances of every single 'incident' he has ever been involved in. He remembers who and when and where and why. He doesn't have a photographic memory (the word is eidetic, he knows, but he likes photographic better), although he's always wished he did. Having that sort of memory seems powerful, and Casey often wishes for that sort of power. Any sort of power.

He is not eidetic, but his memory is photographic in other ways. It is photographic in the sense that his memories are _like_ photographs. His memories are snapshots, frozen instants of time. He can remember the exact expression on Roy's face the first time he had hit Casey. Casey's mind had kept it, like a picture in an album.

Casey's mind had kept a lot of those types of moments. His mental photo album entitled 'You're such a fucking loser, Casey Conner' is quite thick. Not full, by any means. Not complete. Casey is pretty sure that this sort of album is never complete.

There's always room for one more.

He had always thought that _that_ particular mental photograph, that frozen moment (in his mind, it had Casey's mom's handwriting scrawled on the back: Casey, 9th grade, 15 years) had been the one in which his childhood had fled screaming from Casey's life. That had been the beginning of the future, so to speak. That had given him the first inkling of understanding of what his life was going to be like for the next handful of years.

Casey has been living with this misconception for some time, never recognizing it as mistaken, until the moment when Zeke slams full body into the equipment cage, scaring the shit out of Casey and Stokely, who had just been working on a 'survivors' type bonding moment.

If he'd had a gun, he would have shot Zeke dead.

He looks into Zeke's eyes, and sees clearly that Zeke knows it. He understands instantly that he will not be sharing any survivor moments with Zeke. In spite of the blood on his forehead, Zeke's eyes are glittering and alert, assessing, and his voice is cool when he says: "Is it over?" His stare pierces Casey.

Casey doesn't hear himself respond, but he supposes either he or Stokely must have, because Zeke relaxes minutely, though he doesn't take his glittering eyes off of Casey's face. Zeke isn't the type to hide things. His eyes on Casey are openly suspicious. Not so open, but still recognizable, is something that looks to Casey like fear.

The end of childhood, Casey discovers, has nothing to do with Roy, nothing to do with beatings, nothing to do, even, with knowing what it feels like to intentionally kill.

It is here, instead, amidst the devastation that is the boys' locker room. It had not been in the gym, hearing the fragmented mental echo of Mary Beth's screams (he doesn't know why he could hear her death screams in his head, and he doesn't want to know), even though Casey thinks that is where it should have been, if it was going to be somewhere other than where he'd always thought. It's right here, in the equipment cage, Stokely still grasping his forearms for support. It is looking at Casey from the other side of the criss-crossed metal, with blood on its face and a disarming smile of relief on its lips.

The end of childhood is in Zeke's eyes.

Fear and suspicion are in Zeke's eyes, and when Casey sees it he is abruptly assaulted with the utter certainty, the choking, dismal, and absolute understanding, that Zeke's eyes won't be the only ones he sees this in.

He is dismayed, when he turns to look at Stokely again, to be proved right almost immediately.

**

He dreams Mary Beth's screams, and it pisses him off because dreaming it, night after night, means he wakes up thinking about it every morning. He really doesn't want to understand why he could hear her like that, hear her with his ears and with his mind. He doesn't even want any theories about it. He wants to pretend it never happened.

He does have theories though, because Casey's brain worries things without Casey's permission.

It could've been the parasites she/it had sprayed at Casey in the last few seconds of her life. They had burrowed about half way into him before she had died and they had fallen away, and maybe just touching them, having them partially in him, had been enough to open some kind of telepathic conduit between her and Casey. So that could have been it.

It's possible that it's only in Casey's mind. It's possible that, under the strain and stress and terror, his mind had just made that bit up. Just one more thing to torture himself with. One more thing to cause him to wake up biting back screams.

The theory he keeps returning to, though, the one that feels the most correct even though it sounds the most unlikely, is just that the whole thing was so terribly, terribly intimate.

Casey has never had a lover, but he thinks sex must be intimate like that. Especially the kind of sex that carries emotion with it. Not love, exclusively, but _some_ kind of emotion. He understands that it doesn't take love or even sex to share something with someone (whether you want to or not) that is profound. He understands that sharing something like that - something so fraught with emotion - creates some kind of weirdly powerful and inappropriate bond. He's gotten the hell beaten out of him often enough to understand that kind of thing. He thinks it might be something like that, and he understands things like that because he can remember the looks on the faces of every person that has ever hit him, and no one will ever be able to tell him that hitting Casey is not a profoundly emotional thing. He has seen it, and his mind records things like that.

He has seen the fierce joy and snarling brutality, and he thinks it must have been on his own face at least once, at least that one time, and maybe being the victim of that look so many times just makes Casey too fucking empathetic for his own good.

Or maybe it's simpler, even, than that. Mary Beth obviously had some sort of psychic link to those... things... the parasite things. She had some kind of control over them. So it isn't outside the realm of possibility that she was somewhat psychic, telepathic, whatever you want to call it, and that Casey was close enough to get a big taste of that when she died.

Whatever it was, it gives him something to blame the nightmares on.

**

Casey has always been envious of almost everyone. He's used to it, and he thinks it shouldn't eat at him like this, but it does.

Afterwards, things had gradually resumed their proper shapes.

Some things are different. Zeke has taken to screwing Ms. Burke. He's also joined the football team. Sometimes the combination of the two is enough to send Casey into fits of screaming, near-hysterical laughter.

Delilah and Casey had sort of dated for about ten days. They had been sitting on Casey's couch watching a movie, when Casey had turned toward her to say something and surprised that rabbity, mistrustful look on her face. It was an expression he had become familiar with on the faces of others, and he is pretty sure it had been on Delilah's before; he just hadn't ever actually caught it there. Casey had gotten up and left without a word, and they had never spoken of it. They had barely spoken since, in fact.

At the moment, Delilah is dating a transfer student. Casey thinks of him as shiny and new, never possessed, and he's pretty sure that is what Delilah likes about him, as he is neither a jock, nor rich. Casey actually almost likes him. He's heard the story, of course, but just hearing it apparently isn't enough to instill the fear of Casey in him. He looks at Casey with a kind of puzzled disbelief, which isn't great, but certainly beats the hell out of the other looks Casey is getting.

No one beats Casey up, of course, but that's probably mostly due to the fact that no one really gets within a five-foot radius of him if they can help it. Walking through the hallways at school is like having an invisible ship's prow preceding him, splitting the waters of the student body to clear an empty slice of hallway, occupied only by Casey.

No one looks him in the eye, either.

He unintentionally exacerbates this division one day when he sees something so familiar he has to stop for a moment, and just stare. It's a laughing, roughhousing group of upper-classmen carrying a struggling, smaller kid between them, and headed for the flagpole.

Casey can't even see who is involved. His vision is unclear, his head swimming with rage. He walks toward them feeling as though he isn't moving under his own power, and inserts himself between the gaggle of figures and the flagpole. They stop, exchanging looks -- he can see this clearly, even though their faces are weirdly unidentifiable, blurred somehow -- and Casey is shaking with fury, absolutely livid with it, and he is grinding his teeth so hard he thinks he can taste powdery enamel on his tongue.

They put the kid down.

There are no words involved, and Casey can almost smell their fear and resentment as they back away, their intended victim included, ridiculously united in their fear of little Casey Conner.

It is the only time Casey has ever deliberately used that fear, but he suspects it will not be the last time. It isn't about enjoying it. He hadn't and he doesn't.

It just makes him tired when he sees it on the faces of near-strangers, classmates, teachers, people he has never been close to, been a part of. It makes him tired and sort of sad.

It's when he sees it in Stan's eyes, or Stokely's -- any of the four of them with which he _had_ formed a group, once, however briefly -- that weariness becomes brittle and brutal and furious.

He understands that he will use the fear, eventually, maybe even come to like it, because it's better than nothing. And that's what he has now. Nothing. No one. No power, no pleasure, no joy, only this deep and aching bitterness that feels like it's swallowing him up, black currents, undertows that he cannot escape, no matter how hard he swims.

He had killed for them, and that meant he couldn't be one of them. Not anymore.

And it isn't fucking fair, it isn't right, because fucking Zeke had killed, too. Furlong and Drake, dead now, and gone forever. Zeke had done it, too, but only Casey is the focus of that apprehension, that stuttering silence as he walks into a room, averted eyes and sideways glances.

He tells himself that it isn't the same, and he knows it's true. Most of them don't know what actually happened to Furlong and Drake. He thinks. He isn't sure, because he was never a part of whatever psychic net that Mary Beth had woven them into, so he will never be sure exactly how much they all knew, how much they all drew from her mind while she was still pretty and petite and blonde, and witnessing the whole fucking debacle from the inside. But he tells himself they don't know because it is just a little bit easier. He tells himself that whatever connection Mary Beth had given them had been more basic, it hadn't been something that passed on every detail like that, because if they all know, if they all understand, then it is even fucking worse. And Casey is pretty sure he couldn't stand it if it was any worse than it is, so pretending that they don't know is better.

But it doesn't matter, because it isn't _all_ of them that he cares about. It's only the four of them. He had never been a part of the whole _them,_ anyway. Casey hadn't been part of them even when they had all been a part of each other, a part of Mary Beth.

But the other four (he'd started thinking of the five of them as himself and _the other four_ when it became clear to him that, really, that is how they are divided now), they mattered. Casey had been a part of them, once.

It isn't right that they should expel Casey from the 'them' because of what Casey had seen and done. It was _especially_ not right that they should expel Casey, but let _Zeke_ stay.

He is well aware that this is a seriously shitty thing to feel. Nevertheless, he sometimes hates Zeke. Sometimes he wants to confront them, to demand to know why. Sometimes he wants to be among them, _one of them_ , so badly that he grinds his teeth until his jaws ache and he has to blink twice a second to keep back tears.

And sometimes, because he is an asshole, he thinks he would be content if they would just expel Zeke, too. He can't help wishing that they looked at Zeke like they look at Casey, like he is something too strange and dangerous to study outside carefully controlled laboratory environments.

And, because he is a _stupid_ asshole, he sometimes thinks he would be content if only Zeke didn't look at him like that.

**

He often thinks that he will never get to find out what it feels like to not be alone.

The only time he hadn't been alone, he'd been too fucking busy staying alive to enjoy it.

Cest la vie.

He's had a few dreams in which he didn't kill Mary Beth.

Either through mishap or intent, she doesn't die, and Casey is assimilated (like the Borg, except without gadgets), and he is a part of them, and he's not alone. He remembers Mary Beth telling him he could be a part of something so special, so perfect, so fearless...

He remembers telling her he'd rather be afraid.

He understands that he hadn't known what the hell he was saying at the time, because he'd never been afraid.

Real fear is knowing that if you had it all to do over again, you'd close your eyes and kiss her on her pretty pink mouth, and deliberately give up everything not to be alone inside your own mind. Real fear is knowing that you wouldn't think twice, and everyone else be damned.

**

Casey had been alone, in the end, but he hadn't felt alone. Zeke had still been human, and it had felt like Zeke was with him. He had thought about Zeke when he had plunged the pen into Mary Beth's saucer-sized eye, aimed it at that elliptical pupil. He had even said Zeke's words, stolen words from an eavesdropped conversation spoken in a world Casey had never been a part of.

But only Casey had killed her, and everyone knows that. Zeke because he had been the only one left, other than Casey, and Zeke had been unconscious. Everyone else, because they had _been_ there. They had been part of Mary Beth. He knows this because Stokely had whispered it to him, later that night. He and Zeke and Stokely had hidden out at Zeke's house, away from the hectic frenzy of the aftermath, drinking liquor straight out of the bottle from Zeke's 'emergency supply'.

Stokely had whispered that she remembered it all, remembered everything, and that the last thing she had seen before she had passed out had been Casey, pen at the ready, and that Mary Beth's screams in her brain had felt like a thousand stinging wasps, red pain and despair and loss and horror and confusion, and she had wanted to die. Her voice had broken into sobs, then, and Casey had understood that she still wanted to die.

The next morning, though, she had seemed better.

When he is capable of anything resembling optimism, he tells himself that this is why they are afraid of him. Mary Beth had been psychic (or whatever the alien equivalent of psychic is) and her last thoughts of him had been fear and pain. He tells himself that they were all so deeply connected to her, that it wasn't really all that surprising that those feelings about him had imprinted themselves onto their minds.

Hell, they had been strong enough that even Casey had heard her screams. Right?

When he is capable of that kind of optimism (which is rarely), he can forgive three of the other four of them, too. Because they had been through it, too. He remembers the horror in Stokely's eyes, the searing hurt of it, and he can forgive them.

But he can never forgive Zeke, and sometimes he _hates_ Zeke. Zeke is just as much a killer as Casey, and Zeke is still allowed among them. Zeke is a football player; his bad boy, drug dealer past is forgotten.

He thinks now that he should have confronted Zeke that night in the locker room, while the blood was still fresh enough to drip from the gash in his forehead. Or later, at Zeke's house, after Stokely had fallen into a stupor. He thinks he should have told Zeke to knock that shit off, that Casey hadn't done anything except what Zeke himself had tried to do, and _failed._

It's too late to do that now. Or at least, it's too late for it to make a difference.

Zeke is one of them now, playing football and screwing the faculty, and why the hell would he want to give that up?

**

Casey is in the bleachers, alone. His camera is sitting beside him. He has spent the day taking pictures of the other four, but only when they don't know he's doing it. He has a huge folder of them, yet he keeps adding more every day. It's pathetic, he knows this, but it doesn't stop him.

When they don't know he's there, their faces are so open and fearless.

The camera is just a hobby now. Casey doesn't take pictures for the newspaper anymore. No one smiles when Casey has a camera pointed at them.

He is aware of Zeke long before Zeke comes and sits down next to him. Three feet away, but next to him. On the same tier, anyhow.

 _Why are you here, why are you doing this to me?_ Casey thinks, but he says: "Fuck off, Zeke."

Zeke doesn't move.

Casey feels bile and fury inching up his throat, wanting to escape from his lips, but he's still Casey enough not to want to do this. Not to want to hurt Zeke, not to want to take anything away from him. He's still in control of himself enough to understand that he can't be around Zeke without doing it, so he has to go.

He stomps his way down the bleachers. Every other riser is a wooden plank, a seat, and every other step makes a loud 'thonk' sound, and vibrates up his left leg.

He is halfway across the football field, moving away from the school, though he is only just aware of that, when Zeke catches his elbow.

For a moment, the fact that Zeke just _touched_ him is such a shock that he doesn't do anything. Then it registers that such a thing shouldn't be shocking, that a simple touch shouldn't be grounds for a tiny, mute celebration, and before he can stop it, there is that white fury, hot and vitriolic, building up in his belly and climbing his throat like the mercury in a thermometer, and when it hits his brain, Casey whirls, swinging with both fists, and screaming wordless rage.

One of his fists cracks Zeke across the jaw (it's loud, which takes Casey by surprise), and Zeke staggers backward. His face is a pale, oval smudge, like before, like the upperclassmen at the flagpole, and Casey's other fist takes Zeke in the solar plexus. Zeke chokes out a little gasping sound and hunches slightly, but he doesn't go down, and that just isn't fucking good enough.

If Casey can kill the queen motherfucking alien, surely he can force Zeke down to the goddamned ground, surely he can obtain the simple satisfaction of Zeke looking up at Casey while sprawled on his ass on the football field.

Thought isn't really possible, so Casey just advances, both fists raised. He expects Zeke to back away (he is used to people backing away from him), but Zeke doesn't. He just stands there, and Casey sees that his face is beginning to resolve itself into something more recognizable. Casey doesn't want that, he wants to hold onto fury, which makes him feel clear and empty and clean, makes him feel strong and whole instead of broken and bitter and wretched, and seeing Zeke clearly will prevent that. He knows it will. It's so much easier to hate when hate is faceless.

He swings again, hoping to smudge Zeke's face again, but this time Zeke doesn't just stand there and let Casey hit him. He catches Casey's wrist and spins him around, folding Casey into his chest like he's preparing to spin Casey out with a flourish, ala tango. Casey drives an elbow back into Zeke's belly, hears Zeke's breath woosh out again, but Zeke doesn't let go. He just captures Casey's other wrist and then wraps both arms around Casey, pinning Casey's back up against Zeke's chest.

Although instinct tells Casey to hiss and spit and claw and bite, Casey doesn't. There is no point to it. Zeke is probably three times stronger than he is.

And Zeke is touching him, almost holding him, and it drains away Casey's rage faster than even seeing Zeke's face clearly would have.

He sighs. He is tired. "Can't you just fuck off, Zeke," he says, and he hates the way his voice sounds, high and trembling and almost a sob. He tugs at his wrists, and Zeke lets him go. "Go play football. Go fuck Ms. Burke. Just go."

Casey takes a couple of steps and turns to face Zeke. Zeke is just looking at him, eyes complicated and dark and unfathomable.

"Casey, why are you so pissed at me?" Zeke asks, and he sounds honestly bewildered.

It's really too much, and Casey laughs bitterly, and it sounds razor-sharp, like it should be drawing blood from the inside of his throat. "Why, Zeke, whatever would make you think that?" he sneers, and is sickeningly satisfied when Zeke actually flinches. He laughs again, and Zeke takes a step back. Zeke's face is knotted and unreadable. That is fine with Casey, perfectly fine. Knotted and unreadable beats out suspicious and fearful by leaps and bounds, as a matter of fucking fact, and maybe if he laughs long enough and loud enough, Zeke will back all the way across the football field and Casey can have some fucking peace.

"Why would I be pissed at _you,_ Zeke? Why would I be pissed at a football jock? Why would I be pissed at Delilah, with her brand spanking new transfer-student-never-been-possessed-by-an-alien-boyfriend? Or Stan and Stokes, why would I be pissed at them and their love conquering all? Pissed? Why the fuck should I be pissed, Zeke?"

Zeke takes another step back, and that's good, that's progress, but it hardly fucking matters. Casey doubts he could shut up right now if a second wave of aliens invaded. It's all coming out, and it won't stop until it's done, and Casey no longer cares if it's going to crush Zeke's happy little world of make believe, in which the frog prince turns into a football hero, fucks the somewhat older princess, and rides off into the fucking sunset with a high school diploma tucked under his belt.

"It's probably that I'm jealous, Zeke," Casey says, or maybe snarls. "Hell, what isn't there to be jealous of? Things are just fucking idyllic in Herrington these days. Everyone is back to normal, and the things that aren't normal are New and Improved. Delilah is running the joint, as per normal, and Stan and Stokely are in True Love. You're in with the motherfucking In Crowd, playing football and fucking the panties off the faculty! How does it feel to be an All American Boy, Zeke? Even your girlfriend is New and Improved! Even better, she doesn't hold a grudge about the whole decapitation incident! What a gal!

"And guess what? Even a girl with a severed head in her recent past can get laid, and Casey Conner is still a fucking virgin! But why the hell would I be pissed, Zeke?"

"Casey," Zeke says, and then looks like he is completely at a loss as to what else to say.

That's okay with Casey. He has plenty more to say. "In recent news, I've been questioned six times by the Eff Bee Eye, and they don't believe a word I say! You see, Zeke, there is no fucking alien corpse to be had. If I killed an enormous alien, there should be one, according to them. There isn't one, and so clearly I'm a nutjob attention-seeking teenager with an overactive imagination. No one looks me in the eye and no one stands too close, so I'm guessing they're pretty much right on the money, there.

"And speaking of corpses not present and accounted for, they would really like to know what the hell happened to the principal and the science teacher. Unfortunately, the 'devoured by an alien' story isn't something they're willing to buy right now."

Casey stops only because he has to breathe. Not because Zeke has gone pale, almost past white and into gray, and is standing so utterly still that it almost hurts to look at him. Not because that stillness screams 'brittle' at Casey, and Casey understands that body language, having been the still one so fucking often in the past few weeks.

"Zeke," Casey says, and his voice sounds weighted and horrible. He wishes he hadn't said anything, ever.

He remembers when his biggest worry every day was whether or not he'd have to explain the bruises to his parents when he got home.

He remembers when Zeke's eyes had just sort of slid over him in a crowd, rather than stuttering once, and then jerking away. He remembers when Zeke looked at him with some kind of half-sympathetic amusement, instead of like Zeke was made of glass and Casey had a diamond-bitted drill. He wishes he didn't have the power to slot that drill bit into one of the fissures he can see in Zeke's smooth and sparkling façade and destroy it with a gentle squeeze, send it shivering and shattering into sparkling shards. Even more, Casey wishes he didn't have the slightest urge to actually _do_ it.

He wishes he was still breakable, and that Zeke was still not.


End file.
